It's so hard to come up with pithy subject titles which allude to the subject to be discussed without being obscenely cliche or cheesy. "Drowning", "HATE HATE HATE", "Grey", "Please feel free to tell me to shut the fuck up with all the bellyaching" (and so on) were all considered and promptly binned.
Well, I'm still in the United States, so let's start there. It's strange - there is so, so much I want to say in order for me to try to work out the shit if even just in my own head, but with the amount of things to say it all just becomes tiresome. Half the time I start venting to The Dude and just give up through sheer exhaustion, both mental and physical, and feel the need to retire for a 20 year nap.
I started out in the let's-get-it-all-out mode not a mere 15 minutes ago (yes, it has taken me that long to get this far...shameful), and my head is now a jumble of half-constructed thoughts and random filler that I'll never be able to bring together in this post. I struggle a lot lately with a foggy head and the general inability to express myself coherently, which isn't exactly conducive to my working life either.
I want to talk about why I miss England, and how I possibly don't miss it as much as I think I do. I want to talk about how I'm pretty sure a lot of Americans (except the ones reading this blog) completely lack a sense of humour and are fake, back-stabbing assholes. I want to talk about how, contrary to what your fair selves indicated previously, I really am fucking up my kid's life with startling aplomb. I think I may have said pretty much that exact same thing last time, but I'm running on fumes here.
There is good news amongst all of the talk of dark days and gloomy thoughts - I have now reached the end of my 6 month probationary period at work, so I am eligible for prescription cover. Thus, I will be hot-footing it to my doctor's someday soon to beg for sweet, medicinal relief. The bad parts of life keep elbowing into the sunny slivers which occasionally peek through, and it's not fair to The Dude and P.
Fingers crossed that my next post is not a muddled, confused mess. I don't expect to be jumping out of bed in the morning desperate to go to work, but I want to be able to function like a real human again. I want to write on here, comment on other blogs again - all the stuff I used to do before in The Motherland. You know, before I was crazy that other time. God willing and the Creek don't rise.
4/05/2011
3/01/2011
Stuck
There is an impulse in me to head to my blog when I am down and feel there is nowhere else to go - the histrionic blogging equivalent of drunk dialing. I come here because I want someone to tell me that everything will work out for the best, to offer some brilliant advice which hadn't previously occurred to me. That is my modus operandi in situations like these; I seem to think the only way out will be via direction given by someone else. Rather than addressing the problem(s) myself, I always want to rely on other people to change my way of thinking. As if a snippet of wisdom doled out by you, or by my Mom, life will align and all will be well. Intellectually I know that I am basically fucked, and this is what it is, that no three line comment left here will stop me wondering if life will ever be truly, unreservedly good.
My brain is not currently in a position to devise a well-crafted post, so I will just get it all out there, hit "publish post", and regret it as soon as I do.
I don't like being back here. Every single day I wonder why we have made this move when we were comfortable in the UK in so many ways - we had job security, we owned our own property, P was enrolled in a great school in which she was flourishing. Ok, we didn't actually *like* our jobs, which was the initial impetus to come back to the US. Oh, we had grown out of our flat too and were looking to sell, acknowledging that even in moving to a bigger place we still wouldn't have the space we wanted for P. The US seemed the obvious choice to improve those areas, but guess what? The joke is on us. We can't sell our property in the UK, we spend more in rent per month than we would on a mortgage for a very nice house, The Dude can't find a job, I HATE my new job, and P goes to a sub-standard daycare/school which manages to drain even more money that we don't have. Bills keep coming in, as they are wont to do, and I'm in constant amazement that we pay so much for not having much of anything quantifiable.
My job might give me a stroke, and on a calmer day I might evaluate how I can't yet decide whether the US workplace is shit overall, or if it's just my place of employment. I was lucky back in the UK - I loved the people I worked with, so I guess it's my turn to be in a work environment that is largely unbearable. Under ordinary circumstances, I genuinely love the field I'm in, but I now dread going to work every day. I sometimes sneak into the bathroom and cry, thinking about how I just want to be home with my baby. Those who know me know that this is *not* Pru-like behaviour, so there is obviously a glitch or 50 in the system somewhere.
We tell ourselves that we need just that "one thing" - a job for him, an offer on our flat in the UK, and then it would all start to be ok. We say that to one another when we are both doom and gloom, but I don't believe it, and I very much doubt The Dude does either.
There are P-related (future) school issues that are also being thrown at us, and I'm just so sick of thinking about it that I'll just skip over it here. When I'm back to being sane, if only for a moment, I have parent-of-a-near-5-year-old crap to bring up on the blog but I can't be arsed right now. Suffice it to say, it's so, so hard to not feel as if I have completely screwed her over in all of this. We moved over here to give her more, and she's living a pale imitation of her former life right now. It tears me apart thinking that I have consciously done this to her.
I try to recall that revisionist personal history is powerful. It makes you think that you were much happier before, that had you stayed in that life, everything would have been fine - peace in the status quo. Truth is, I know I wasn't happy before. I needed change, and I got it. Now I don't want it. I'm always discontent, there, here, everywhere. It doesn't matter. I don't know what I need to do in order to be happy, or if I can be. The DRAMA, I know.
So there it is. I know, it's just one of a hundred times I write these posts. I'll get over it, until the next time when I do it all over again. Don't feel obligated to indulge me by dispensing sage advice, just please, no one say that it could be worse. Things could always be worse - that doesn't make it better.
My brain is not currently in a position to devise a well-crafted post, so I will just get it all out there, hit "publish post", and regret it as soon as I do.
I don't like being back here. Every single day I wonder why we have made this move when we were comfortable in the UK in so many ways - we had job security, we owned our own property, P was enrolled in a great school in which she was flourishing. Ok, we didn't actually *like* our jobs, which was the initial impetus to come back to the US. Oh, we had grown out of our flat too and were looking to sell, acknowledging that even in moving to a bigger place we still wouldn't have the space we wanted for P. The US seemed the obvious choice to improve those areas, but guess what? The joke is on us. We can't sell our property in the UK, we spend more in rent per month than we would on a mortgage for a very nice house, The Dude can't find a job, I HATE my new job, and P goes to a sub-standard daycare/school which manages to drain even more money that we don't have. Bills keep coming in, as they are wont to do, and I'm in constant amazement that we pay so much for not having much of anything quantifiable.
My job might give me a stroke, and on a calmer day I might evaluate how I can't yet decide whether the US workplace is shit overall, or if it's just my place of employment. I was lucky back in the UK - I loved the people I worked with, so I guess it's my turn to be in a work environment that is largely unbearable. Under ordinary circumstances, I genuinely love the field I'm in, but I now dread going to work every day. I sometimes sneak into the bathroom and cry, thinking about how I just want to be home with my baby. Those who know me know that this is *not* Pru-like behaviour, so there is obviously a glitch or 50 in the system somewhere.
We tell ourselves that we need just that "one thing" - a job for him, an offer on our flat in the UK, and then it would all start to be ok. We say that to one another when we are both doom and gloom, but I don't believe it, and I very much doubt The Dude does either.
There are P-related (future) school issues that are also being thrown at us, and I'm just so sick of thinking about it that I'll just skip over it here. When I'm back to being sane, if only for a moment, I have parent-of-a-near-5-year-old crap to bring up on the blog but I can't be arsed right now. Suffice it to say, it's so, so hard to not feel as if I have completely screwed her over in all of this. We moved over here to give her more, and she's living a pale imitation of her former life right now. It tears me apart thinking that I have consciously done this to her.
I try to recall that revisionist personal history is powerful. It makes you think that you were much happier before, that had you stayed in that life, everything would have been fine - peace in the status quo. Truth is, I know I wasn't happy before. I needed change, and I got it. Now I don't want it. I'm always discontent, there, here, everywhere. It doesn't matter. I don't know what I need to do in order to be happy, or if I can be. The DRAMA, I know.
So there it is. I know, it's just one of a hundred times I write these posts. I'll get over it, until the next time when I do it all over again. Don't feel obligated to indulge me by dispensing sage advice, just please, no one say that it could be worse. Things could always be worse - that doesn't make it better.
1/04/2011
Why hello there
My initial concern was that I wouldn't remember how to get to my blog, and even if I did - would I know how to log in and where to go once I was? I managed this after a couple of tries, then realized the larger problem would be whether I remember how to write. I'm concerned that until I get back into the swing of things (assuming I can manage to blog more than once every 6 months), I'll write in the self-conscious style that plagued my early posts. Reading my old posts you'd be forgiven for thinking you'd stumbled onto a 13 year old's diary, not the blog of someone in their late 20s talking about infertility. Late 20s...oh, those were the days.
So yes, I'm "back", though I never really left. I shifted my whole life and family back to the fair shores of the US and got lazy. Creating a new life for three is hard, let me tell you. I could pretend that I have no time, but I do. My kid (nearly 4 1/2 - SHIT) goes to bed at 7.30pm, I go to bed around 11pm every night. That is 3 1/2 hours of nothingness. Said nothingness is largely spent watching TV or DVDs with The Dude, catching up on what we have missed all these years away. Let me tell you - you people have got this reality TV thing down. Yes, it is "you people", because though I have lived in the US for three months and uh, I am American, I'm having some outsider issues which I hope will lessen soon.
My job is frustrating; it seems the notion of "training" is not important to the new place, yet haranguing me for not doing something I did not even know existed is acceptable. I am very independent and thorough, so this is not my chosen method in which to work. Professionally, I wouldn't want to do anything else, but I'm not sure if this is the institution for me. I am trying to be open-minded about it because I know it can take awhile to adjust, particularly when you come from a familiar, comfortable environment. I've been increasingly homesick for a country I am not even from, and on most days I debate whether I've done the right thing.
So here we are, dropped in an unfamiliar place, slowly getting our bearings. The Dude vacillates between thinking that the life we'll have here will be great once we sell our place in the UK and he finds a job, and OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE WE DONE? He has started doing some part-time coaching which has alleviated some of the overall pervasive misery, but neither one of us can help thinking about the two fairly good-paying jobs and property that we owned (god, I hate renting) and left behind.
P is just peachy regardless. She's happy here, she's happy there, she'd be happy in Eritrea. She is a jolly little bean, if not a jolly little dictating bean. See, I suppose not everything changes. We question our decision on her behalf as well, because even though she's well-adjusted, things could always be better. I wonder if anyone ever feels confident that their child(ren)have the very best life that they can provide. I didn't feel as if I was doing that in England, which was part of the reason for the move. Yet, I certainly don't feel as if I'm doing that here either. I don't know if that ideal space exists.
So yes, I am here. Disjointed, confused, stumbling blindly through life both real and cyber. My goal for this week is to read blogs, so watch yourselves. That is, if I can remember how to sign in and comment on them. Oh yeah, or if I'm not distracted by all of the quality reality television - damn you Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Millionaire Matchmaker!
So yes, I'm "back", though I never really left. I shifted my whole life and family back to the fair shores of the US and got lazy. Creating a new life for three is hard, let me tell you. I could pretend that I have no time, but I do. My kid (nearly 4 1/2 - SHIT) goes to bed at 7.30pm, I go to bed around 11pm every night. That is 3 1/2 hours of nothingness. Said nothingness is largely spent watching TV or DVDs with The Dude, catching up on what we have missed all these years away. Let me tell you - you people have got this reality TV thing down. Yes, it is "you people", because though I have lived in the US for three months and uh, I am American, I'm having some outsider issues which I hope will lessen soon.
My job is frustrating; it seems the notion of "training" is not important to the new place, yet haranguing me for not doing something I did not even know existed is acceptable. I am very independent and thorough, so this is not my chosen method in which to work. Professionally, I wouldn't want to do anything else, but I'm not sure if this is the institution for me. I am trying to be open-minded about it because I know it can take awhile to adjust, particularly when you come from a familiar, comfortable environment. I've been increasingly homesick for a country I am not even from, and on most days I debate whether I've done the right thing.
So here we are, dropped in an unfamiliar place, slowly getting our bearings. The Dude vacillates between thinking that the life we'll have here will be great once we sell our place in the UK and he finds a job, and OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE WE DONE? He has started doing some part-time coaching which has alleviated some of the overall pervasive misery, but neither one of us can help thinking about the two fairly good-paying jobs and property that we owned (god, I hate renting) and left behind.
P is just peachy regardless. She's happy here, she's happy there, she'd be happy in Eritrea. She is a jolly little bean, if not a jolly little dictating bean. See, I suppose not everything changes. We question our decision on her behalf as well, because even though she's well-adjusted, things could always be better. I wonder if anyone ever feels confident that their child(ren)have the very best life that they can provide. I didn't feel as if I was doing that in England, which was part of the reason for the move. Yet, I certainly don't feel as if I'm doing that here either. I don't know if that ideal space exists.
So yes, I am here. Disjointed, confused, stumbling blindly through life both real and cyber. My goal for this week is to read blogs, so watch yourselves. That is, if I can remember how to sign in and comment on them. Oh yeah, or if I'm not distracted by all of the quality reality television - damn you Real Housewives of Beverly Hills and Millionaire Matchmaker!
9/13/2010
Bon Voyage
Four months of silence, yet I consistently don't know what to say when faced with a blank Blogger screen. The gist is this:
-I got a job in the US.
-I, and by which I mean only me, leave England after 8+ years on Wednesday. One day from now.
-I am terrified.
-I will be away from The Dude and P for two or three weeks, perhaps more.
-I have had one month to prepare for this and I have failed. Majorly.
-For the next few days I will mostly be crying and trying not to throw up repeatedly. This applies to repeatedly trying not to throw up, as well as possibly trying not to throw up repeatedly.
-This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.
I'm not sure what the next month will bring. I will try my best not to beseige this place with my misery whilst I'm trying to sort out my new life over there alone.
Shit. Fuck. Bollocks. Wank.
-I got a job in the US.
-I, and by which I mean only me, leave England after 8+ years on Wednesday. One day from now.
-I am terrified.
-I will be away from The Dude and P for two or three weeks, perhaps more.
-I have had one month to prepare for this and I have failed. Majorly.
-For the next few days I will mostly be crying and trying not to throw up repeatedly. This applies to repeatedly trying not to throw up, as well as possibly trying not to throw up repeatedly.
-This is a lot harder than I thought it would be.
I'm not sure what the next month will bring. I will try my best not to beseige this place with my misery whilst I'm trying to sort out my new life over there alone.
Shit. Fuck. Bollocks. Wank.
5/02/2010
Maman
When I was pregnant, I finally began to realise the weight attached to my own notion of motherhood. I never perceived myself to be the maternal type, and my relationship with my own mother, though loving, has some element of distance because we are two very different people. I have never been particularly fond of children, and even with one of my own, maintain a withdrawn, wary stance when it comes to the children of others. Since I had P, I suppose my Mom and I have grown closer, though I do feel as if my general emotional reservedness is at odds with her outgoing, emotionally bold personality.
My Mom lost her mother when I, her first child, was not yet a year old. Growing up, I knew how profoundly her loss affected her - she was apologetic that I never knew my grandmother, and her mourning was two-fold now that she too had a daughter. I didn't think much about the daughter-mother-grandmother link until I was trying to get pregnant and had a dreadful nightmare that my Mom died right after I had a daughter of my own. I was lost as she had been, struggling to come to terms with new motherhood and grief simultaneously. It was a strange, lingering dream which annoyingly elbowed its way into my waking life and provided a very odd world for me mentally for quite some time afterwards.
Since I had P, I haven't lingered on that dream much. I can't. As most of you know, I have some issues with anxiety, so the further away those thoughts, the better. My worry is often allocated entirely to P, and there is so much of it, there is not often much spare. This afternoon my brother called to say that my Mom took herself to the ER early this morning because she was having heart palpitations. Because "rational" is not a word often associated with my mental processes, I have been going to extremes all day. My brother has not seemed overly concerned, but then again, he's male, and I'm 4000 miles away and helpless. He often downplays all of my Dad's forays into alcoholic idiocy, so I know he's worried too and just masking it well.
Being a negative person and extreme worrier, this only goes one way with me. Even if it's nothing this time, it has awakened an alarm within me so that from now until someone actually dies, I will think every phone call is bad news. I know it sounds horribly melodramatic and an exaggeration, but this is how my mind works. It has always latched on to one occasion where something went wrong, and thus every other time the same situation presents itself, I assume it to be bad. Once The Dude had head pain so severe that I rushed him to the ER, with me believing he was surely experiencing an aneurysm and would die before we got there. Instead, he was 26 when he discovered he inherited his mother's tendency to debilitating migraines. Nonetheless, with every twinge, every need to take an Excedrin, it's 11 years ago again and I'm bracing myself for the worst.
Since my brother phoned, I have been catastrophizing. That's what us anxious people do, and who am I to disappoint? I am now starkly aware of my Mom's mortality, and cannot think of anything else. I think of it in terms of her being my own mother of course, but also her presence as the Granny P adores. I could be a mother defining my own mother to my child in purely anecdotal terms one day - soon? - just as she was 25 years ago. My mind then goes further, just to fuck with me even more, to remind me that as I'm trying to get pregnant again, I have possible dead-grandmother emotional baggage for that hypothetical child as well. Yes, yes, I know it all sounds so absurd, and to be honest typing it makes me feel a bit ridiculous. Regretfully, rational thought does not mix well with catastrophizing.
My Mom rang about an hour ago, scaring the shit out of me as that blessed ring will do from now on. She wanted to tell me that all was ok, "so you'll sleep well tonight." Ha! She's in a difficult place - other than being more or less on her own to deal with this, she has to concern herself with my fragile mental state. She knows how I am. She often brings up the many times in my childhood when I would be too anxious to sleep and she had to stroke my hair and talk about our "peaceful place." Apparently her issue (something about a sinus which I WILL NOT Google, or I shall never sleep again) can be treated by something as simple as medication, or at its most invasive extreme, a pacemaker.
Strangely enough, there was a line that had been bouncing around in my head all week, one which I read somewhere - I'm paraphrasing, but basically, the important things that change your life are the ones which happen in a second. We tend to ascribe all the gravity of our lives to the things we ponder over and over again - do I move back to the US? Do I greet infertility again to see if I can try my luck again? - rather than the ones which can change it all in an instant.
I was in an awkward mental place prior to all of this anyway, so it's only natural that the weirdness should be extended a bit longer. I guess it's a combination of PMS (because OF COURSE my period is impending), and general mental imbalance, but I have been near tears or tearful for the past 48 hours. Now I guess I at least have a good reason to be so. I'm so paranoid, another fun aspect of my uh, issues, that I picture people reading this and rolling their eyes. Many of you have lost your mothers, or had mothers with issues more severe than what appears to be a rather harmless condition as far as heart things go, and here I am, rabbitting on like the most overreacting-nest person who ever overreacted. If anyone would like to talk me down off the ledge, you are more than welcome to do so.
My Mom lost her mother when I, her first child, was not yet a year old. Growing up, I knew how profoundly her loss affected her - she was apologetic that I never knew my grandmother, and her mourning was two-fold now that she too had a daughter. I didn't think much about the daughter-mother-grandmother link until I was trying to get pregnant and had a dreadful nightmare that my Mom died right after I had a daughter of my own. I was lost as she had been, struggling to come to terms with new motherhood and grief simultaneously. It was a strange, lingering dream which annoyingly elbowed its way into my waking life and provided a very odd world for me mentally for quite some time afterwards.
Since I had P, I haven't lingered on that dream much. I can't. As most of you know, I have some issues with anxiety, so the further away those thoughts, the better. My worry is often allocated entirely to P, and there is so much of it, there is not often much spare. This afternoon my brother called to say that my Mom took herself to the ER early this morning because she was having heart palpitations. Because "rational" is not a word often associated with my mental processes, I have been going to extremes all day. My brother has not seemed overly concerned, but then again, he's male, and I'm 4000 miles away and helpless. He often downplays all of my Dad's forays into alcoholic idiocy, so I know he's worried too and just masking it well.
Being a negative person and extreme worrier, this only goes one way with me. Even if it's nothing this time, it has awakened an alarm within me so that from now until someone actually dies, I will think every phone call is bad news. I know it sounds horribly melodramatic and an exaggeration, but this is how my mind works. It has always latched on to one occasion where something went wrong, and thus every other time the same situation presents itself, I assume it to be bad. Once The Dude had head pain so severe that I rushed him to the ER, with me believing he was surely experiencing an aneurysm and would die before we got there. Instead, he was 26 when he discovered he inherited his mother's tendency to debilitating migraines. Nonetheless, with every twinge, every need to take an Excedrin, it's 11 years ago again and I'm bracing myself for the worst.
Since my brother phoned, I have been catastrophizing. That's what us anxious people do, and who am I to disappoint? I am now starkly aware of my Mom's mortality, and cannot think of anything else. I think of it in terms of her being my own mother of course, but also her presence as the Granny P adores. I could be a mother defining my own mother to my child in purely anecdotal terms one day - soon? - just as she was 25 years ago. My mind then goes further, just to fuck with me even more, to remind me that as I'm trying to get pregnant again, I have possible dead-grandmother emotional baggage for that hypothetical child as well. Yes, yes, I know it all sounds so absurd, and to be honest typing it makes me feel a bit ridiculous. Regretfully, rational thought does not mix well with catastrophizing.
My Mom rang about an hour ago, scaring the shit out of me as that blessed ring will do from now on. She wanted to tell me that all was ok, "so you'll sleep well tonight." Ha! She's in a difficult place - other than being more or less on her own to deal with this, she has to concern herself with my fragile mental state. She knows how I am. She often brings up the many times in my childhood when I would be too anxious to sleep and she had to stroke my hair and talk about our "peaceful place." Apparently her issue (something about a sinus which I WILL NOT Google, or I shall never sleep again) can be treated by something as simple as medication, or at its most invasive extreme, a pacemaker.
Strangely enough, there was a line that had been bouncing around in my head all week, one which I read somewhere - I'm paraphrasing, but basically, the important things that change your life are the ones which happen in a second. We tend to ascribe all the gravity of our lives to the things we ponder over and over again - do I move back to the US? Do I greet infertility again to see if I can try my luck again? - rather than the ones which can change it all in an instant.
I was in an awkward mental place prior to all of this anyway, so it's only natural that the weirdness should be extended a bit longer. I guess it's a combination of PMS (because OF COURSE my period is impending), and general mental imbalance, but I have been near tears or tearful for the past 48 hours. Now I guess I at least have a good reason to be so. I'm so paranoid, another fun aspect of my uh, issues, that I picture people reading this and rolling their eyes. Many of you have lost your mothers, or had mothers with issues more severe than what appears to be a rather harmless condition as far as heart things go, and here I am, rabbitting on like the most overreacting-nest person who ever overreacted. If anyone would like to talk me down off the ledge, you are more than welcome to do so.
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